Thursday, 21 May 2015

Steam Trading Cards teach players about Computer History thanks to Indie Game

Pixel: ru² just released a series of Trading Cards on Steam that focus on the early history of computers. There are 15 cards in total and they give information about famous machines such as the ENIAC, as well as famous people like Alan Turing and Ada Lovelace.

If you don't know about Pixel: ru², it's a cross between a puzzle-platformer and a shooter with a backstory revolving around artificial intelligence, transhumanism, and the future of life. The game play revolves around both color theory and gravity manipulation.

You play as a pixel moving around image files. There are colored barriers that you can pass through if you’re the same color. You can change your color with switches in the levels that will add or remove values from your red-green-blue color channels.

You also have enemy pixels that'll shoot at you. To destroy them you need to shoot them with the opposite color which will turn them white — a white pixel is a dead pixel. There’s a variety of weapons to use including a flame thrower and a rocket launcher.

Because this takes place in a virtual world, you can both jump and reverse gravity as well as change your gravity direction by touching switches in the levels. Our biggest influence was probably Metal Storm for the NES.

Aside from Trading Cards, Pixel: ru² also features Steam Workshop for the built-in level editor and the team is also working on adding online leaderboards. There is also support for 120Hz displays and RGB keyboards.